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The Times Herald : Serving Montgomery County, PA

Monday, November 12, 2012

Little Things

It’s the little things that excite me.As you may know my husband built a cold frame for me and I ordered an automatic opener for it.If the temperature goes up above 60° the lid will open.As you can see from this picture, the lid did open the day after we put it together.I am so excited!

I know that it is silly that I get so excited over this, but I don’t want my plants in there to have issues because it is too hot and I am not there to open and vent the cold frame.Since I leave early in the morning, these temperatures don’t rise until well after I have left and I am not really in a position to run home to take care of it.Even though it is advertised as solar powered it doesn’t have panels, the opener operates on with a piston that adjusts to temperature inside the cold frame or the greenhouse.When I had heard of these things I thought maybe I would have to run electricity out to the garden, so not having to do that is great.

The one thing I do have to remember is to water.I do see a fair amount of condensation on the plastic panels so I know that some moisture is happening in there, but I have set up a schedule to water, or at least check the cold frame, weekly to determine if it needs to be watered.It only takes one 5 gallon watering can so it is not that much and I don’t have to drag the hose out there as I did during the summer.Maybe next year I can get a water source closer.My husband did talk about a rain water collection system but it never got done.I will have to work on him for that. His honey-do list is quite full!